May 12, 2023 10:00 AM

The Best Air Fryers for Quick and Easy Cooking

Prepare flavorful fried food, using little to no oil, with this kitchen staple.

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Close up of chicken nuggets in an air fryer

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Keep hearing about the joys of air frying? Providing a faster and healthier way to cook fried foods with little to no oil, an air fryer has become something of a kitchen staple. It works much like a convection oven to circulate hot air around your food—only it’s more compact and increases your time savings. Think guilt-free crispy chicken, homemade fries, and donuts that are not only simple to make, but come with easier clean-up compared to using a traditional deep-fat fryer.

With smaller capacity interiors to heat and shorter preheating times, an air fryer can be a quicker way to cook than your standard oven too—potentially saving you money off your energy bills if used wisely. (Just make sure it’s large enough to cook what you need, otherwise you’ll be using it multiple times—which will defeat its energy-saving purpose.) Multifunctional in design, some air fryers come loaded with preset cooking modes for baking, roasting, dehydrating, grilling, and reheating. They can tackle a range of meat, fish, and vegetables effectively, as well as sweet treats: think steak and sweet potato fries, homemade apple crisps and a warm banana loaf. Here are WIRED's top picks to suit a range of ingredients and price points.

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Photograph: Grandbrothers/Getty Images
What to Look For
Much like a kettle, blender, or coffee maker, air fryers are designed to be a permanent fixture on your worktop, so if space is tight in your kitchen, you may want to carefully consider the measurements before you buy. The choice of size and finish is wide but some designs can be bulky, which makes them difficult to store when not in use. Remember to check the cooking capacity before you buy to ensure the air fryer will cater to the number of people you’re cooking for—a design with a 6-quart/5.7-liter capacity is ideal for making four to six portions at a time.
Standard air fryers come with a cooking drawer with a basket and grill plate inside. The drawer can be pulled out midway so you can check on your food and give it a shake to make sure it’s cooking evenly. You can also find one-pot multi-cookers that come with an air-fryer setting. These tend to have a lift-up lid that reveals a cooking pot where you can air-fry your food but also prepare stews and casseroles. Then there are those air fryers that look more like small microwaves and have the capacity to rotisserie a whole chicken, cook a pizza, toast muffins, or reheat food. The most flexible designs have a wide temperature range and settings for specific tasks such as roasting, baking, reheating, and dehydrating, on top of your standard air-fry mode.
Photograph: Ninja
Best All-Rounder
Ninja Speedi Rapid Cooker & Air Fryer
Ninja’s latest Speedi can cook fries with up to 75 percent less fat than a traditional deep fryer, but also offers so much more than your standard air fryer. Finished in a subtle gray colorway, it sits compactly on the worktop and has a fold-up lid that opens to reveal a deep 6-quart capacity cooking dish. The design has a 12-in-1 functionality, which includes preset cooking modes for searing and sautéing, steaming, baking, roasting, and, for anyone feeling particularly adventurous, a sous-vide setting. The beauty of the Ninja is that you can also use it to cook one-pot meals in just 15 minutes—and it comes with a recipe inspiration booklet to get you started.
I was impressed at just how neatly the Speedi Rapid Cooker and Air Fryer fit onto a kitchen worktop. It’s low enough to be placed neatly under the worktop, although you will need to pull it out and give it plenty of room to let off steam while in use. It has the premium finish you’d expect from a Ninja appliance and is very easy to operate and wash clean with warm, soapy water. You can use this for everything, from air-frying single foods to preparing complete one-pot meals. I particularly love the ingenious use of space inside, which includes a rack with adjustable legs that make it easy to raise when needed. This means you can prep rice and pasta on the base of the dish while you cook meat, vegetables, fish, and the like at the top. In other words, you can cook a complete meal in one so it’s ready to serve up and enjoy straightaway.
$150 at Amazon
$200 at Ninja
$169 at Walmart
Photograph: ‎Instant Pot
Handy Viewing Window
Instant Vortex Plus Air Fryer Oven
With its 6-quart capacity, this air fryer is a great size for large households as it has the ability to cook up to six portions at a time. There are six cooking modes onboard: air-fry, roast, broil, bake, reheat, and dehydrate. It promises a perfectly golden finish every time and doesn’t disappoint, with crispy, tender results. What I love most about the Instant Vortex, though, is its large viewing window that lights up at the touch of a button. This means you don’t need to open the cooking drawer to check on your food and interrupt the cooking cycle midway through. I was able to see just how golden my homemade chips were turning and monitor the chicken tenders so I knew when they needed turning over and were crisp and ready to eat.
At 95 degrees to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature range on this air fryer is wide, which makes it good for both foods that require a lower temperature—ideal for dehydrating apple crisps, for example—to those that require a higher heat to give them a bit of crunch. And built-in “odor erase” filters reduce cooking smells that can linger. This comes into its own whether you’re using it in an open-plan kitchen and living area or have it on in a small kitchen. The Instant Pot app is great for inspiration, with recipe ideas such as Air Fryer Hawaiian Ham & Cheese Stromboli to Air Fryer Breakfast Bombs with bacon and cheese.
$160 at Amazon
$160 at Walmart
Photograph: Cosori
Our Fave Smart Air Fryer
Cosori Pro III Dual Blaze
What makes this Cosori air fryer stand out is the fact that it can be monitored and controlled remotely using a smartphone or tablet, as well as via its digital control panel. Set-up was simple, and after downloading the Cosori VeSync app, I was able to pair up with ease over Wi-Fi. While, for safety reasons, I couldn’t use the app to start the air fryer, I was able to use it to check the cooking status and remotely adjust the temperature. You can also use the app to search through a wide range of air fryer recipes, such as Teriyaki Glazed Onigiri and Blackcurrant Irish Drop Scones.
While the Cosori Pro doesn’t have a viewing window, I really like the sleek, black design, which feels premium in its finish and sits neatly on the countertop. The cooking drawer slides out smoothly, and the handle doesn’t get hot while in use—although you do need to make sure the air fryer has plenty of space as the sides do get a little hot. It offers a flexible temperature range from a low 175 degrees Fahrenheit to a powerful 400 degrees Fahrenheit, with 12 preset cooking modes to get started. As the cooking space in the drawer is deep and wide, I was able to place eight portions of chicken tenders inside, which needed 15 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit before they looked golden and ready to eat. Banana bread also did well—the Cosori dish is large enough to fit a round baking tin. Within 25 minutes on a 320 degree Fahrenheit setting, the bread was evenly cooked on the outside and nicely spongy on the inside.
$150 at Amazon
$360 at Walmart

Photograph: Ninja
The Compact Pick
Ninja Air Fryer Max XL
Having tried out a wide range of bulky countertop kitchen appliances, it’s always a pleasure to come across a design that doesn’t take up too much space. The Ninja Air Fryer Max XL is compact enough that I wasn’t scrabbling around for usable countertop space to carry out other tasks such as prepping vegetables. The control panel doesn’t have a smart app to accompany it, but it is refreshingly simple to use and clearly illustrated so you can easily tailor the time and temperatures to suit your food. You can choose settings that include max crisp, air fry, air roast, air broil, bake, reheat, and dehydrate.
I found that the 5.5-quart, ceramic-coated, non-stick basket and crisper plate did well to make around four portions of frozen fries in one go on the air-fry setting. The results were even and satisfying after 20 minutes of cooking at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. The max crisp setting is perfect for making homemade chips with a nice amount of crunch at a super toasty temperature up to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. (Just coast evenly in oil and give the basket a shake a few times.) Keen to test the Bake setting, I made a chocolate cake using a small circular tin. To convert recipes from a conventional oven, Ninja suggests that you reduce the temperature by 25 degrees Fahrenheit and preheat for a few minutes before baking. The bake setting defaulted to 325 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes, which worked well with the cake rising evenly. After an extra five minutes, the inside cooked through without the top of the cake burning.
$94 at Amazon
$170 at Walmart
$170 at Ninja
Photograph: Breville
This One Does Pizza
Breville the Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro
Similar in style and shape to a countertop microwave oven, this brushed stainless steel Breville air fryer comes with a drop-down door that opens to reveal a large 1-cubic-foot interior. It’s roomy enough to fit large whole cuts of meat and can even take on a 14-pound turkey, or air-fry at least six portions of fries at a time on the interior tray. I found the LCD control panel here particularly easy to navigate. It comes with a dial that makes it easy to scroll through the 13 cooking functions on offer, with precise settings for everything from toasting, roasting, and warming, to cooking a pizza, reheating, making cookies, and even slow cooking.
The wide temperature offering ranges from 80 to 480 degrees Fahrenheit, and I was pleased with just how well this air fryer could tackle a range of foods with different temperature requirements, such as fries and chicken wings as well as pizza and toast—producing even, crispy results, every time. While the Breville comes with a selection of its own accessories, including a pizza pan and mesh basket rack for dehydrating and air frying, what’s great about this design is that it’s large enough to add your own pans inside—such as a cast-iron Le Creuset dish for when you’re slow cooking food. While I found it quite easy to wipe clean, you do need to clean the interior regularly after each use—particularly around the element area where the grease can set in if left.
★ A smarter alternative: Breville's Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro ($545) (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is very similar in its offering. If you pay around $100 more than the Smart Oven Pro, you can use a dedicated smart app to monitor food while it's cooking.
$400 at Amazon
$586 at Walmart
$400 at Breville

Emily Peck is a journalist with 20+ years experience writing about interiors, food, wellbeing, gardens, technology and everything in-between. She has held in-house positions at the BBC and Ideal Home magazine, and regularly contributes to WIRED, GQ, The Telegraph, Livingetc, Techradar and GoodtoKnow.

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